Front-yard ice rink in Sutton gives hockey fans an edge

Other men, like Jeff Fenuccio, say, “Why not build our own hockey rink in the front yard?”

For the Fenuccio family at 1 Wachusett Drive, the hockey withdrawal caused by the NHL lockout is made less painful by the 64-by-32-foot rink in front of their house that has become a neighborhood landmark.

“This is the third year in a row for the rink,” said Mr. Fenuccio, 46, an electrician. “We started in ’11. We built the rink and the Bruins won the Stanley Cup. We figured we better keep building it.”

Mr. Fenuccio and his wife, Laura-Lee, have four children — Jake, 19, Meg, 18, Katlyn, 15, and Ben, 12 — and for the youngsters and their friends the rink has become a go-to place for winter fun. Spotlights are in place for night skating, and Christmas lights ringing the ice lend a holiday flair. Music is piped in via speakers in the bushes.

“The kids will be out there for hours and hours,” Mr. Fenuccio said. “When there are 15 or 20 kids out there, a neighbor will bring over wood and they’ll have a fire pit.” A coffee urn in the kitchen keeps everyone in hot cocoa. Sometimes the hockey games go until late at night. Next-door neighbor Dennis Cote is very patient about pucks landing in his yard at midnight: “He’s awesome,” Mrs. Fenuccio said.

The Fenuccios are big hockey fans. On the wall in the den hang a Derek Sanderson jersey and autographed rookie card, and an autographed picture of Shawn Thornton. On the DVD of the Bruins Stanley Cup victory celebration, if you look fast, you can see the banner the Fenuccios were holding along the parade route outside the Garden.

“Hockey is a gathering for us,” Mr. Fenuccio said. “The way some people get together for football, we do with hockey.”

So the NHL lockout weighs heavily. “We’re struggling,” he said. “We went to the Sharks game last night, but it’s not the same.”

The rink is a consolation. Mr. Fenuccio and five kids put it up the day after Thanksgiving. “It went from a pile of wood to a completed rink in one day,” he said. Daughter Meg painted the designs on the boards: a pink breast-cancer-awareness ribbon, a Dunkin Donuts ad, logos of the Bruins and of the Charlestown Chiefs from the movie “Slapshot.”

Sunday afternoon, skating conditions were not ideal. The foot of snow that had fallen overnight had pushed the ice down, and the unfrozen water beneath, up: yesterday morning found the rink under 4 inches of water. “We shoveled and scraped and it looks pretty good now,” Mr. Fenuccio said. “By tonight, it’ll freeze again. It’s going to get colder and colder.”

Mr. Fenuccio has invented something he calls the “Handboni.” A backpack sprayer with PVC piping that pumps hot water for dragging on the ice with a towel, it “makes the ice perfect,” he said. His wife added, with a smile: “It looks like something from “ ’Ghostbusters.’ ”

What does it cost to put in a rink? The initial cost was about $1,500 in lumber and plastic, Mr. Fenuccio said. Since then, it has cost about $200 a season to maintain it.

He said they’ve learned a lot along the way: how not to rip the plastic liner, when and when not to fill it before a deep freeze, how to get leaves out with a pool skimmer.

The effort and expense have been worth it, the Fenuccios said. “We don’t have a hill for sledding, and it’s expensive taking the kids skiing,” Mr. Fenuccio said. “We can watch the kids skate from our window.”

The rink is “getting bigger and better every year,” said son Jake, a student at Northeastern. “People drive by all the time, as if we had a crazy light display. Four guys already stopped by this morning.” Ben added: “The UPS guy was checking us out.”

Mr. Fenuccio said: “Everyone else has little white lights in the window. We have this hockey rink.”